Dan Brown and Publishing’s “DBDay”

With 6.5 million copies of Dan Brown‘s “The Lost Symbol” coming out on September 15, publishing folks are looking towards what some call “DBDay” with a mixture of anticipation and fear.

Former Publishers Weekly editor Sara Nelson interviewed a number of publishing types for The Daily Beast, giving an inside glimpse at expectations for the novel. Thriller author Joseph Finder worried that the book will influence his sales, and Nelson projected that other writers “prefer to scuttle like cockroaches” than face Brown’s book on the bestseller list.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay: “[I]f I were ‘Into the Wild’ author Jon Krakauer, whose long-awaited book about Pat Tillman, ‘Where Men Win Glory,’ is slated for the same pub date, I might be a little anxious about the fact that my publisher Doubleday has been so preoccupied with their ‘star project’ that at least one wag has already dubbed them DBDay. Still, publishers insist, there is plenty of in-house marketing muscle to go around.”

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